Drinking Water

Reliable, safe and pure drinking water is important. To make sure the highest quality of water is provided to our customers, the Yucaipa Valley Water District continuously invests and enhances our water infrastructure to provide the community with a long-term and sustainable water supply.

The Yucaipa Valley Water District delivers about 4 billion gallons of drinking water each year. Over the past decade, the customers of the Yucaipa Valley Water District consumed about 290 gallons per capita per day.

Most of our drinking water supply comes from local groundwater sources. The Yucaipa Valley Water District produces groundwater from about ten separate subbasins in the area. Each groundwater subbasin has different characteristic for water quality and water quantity. Generally, while the groundwater is exceptionally high quality, the amount of groundwater available is limited.

To augment our limited groundwater supply, the Yucaipa Valley Water District produces drinking water from the State Water Project to meet about one third of our annual water demand. The Yucaipa Valley Water District also imports water supplies to replenish our groundwater basins for future use.

The remainder of our water demand is met using local surface water and recycled water for irrigation purposes.

Over the past two decades, the Yucaipa Valley Water District has been actively taking steps to improve the social, economic and environmental sustainability of our community. These actions have included the purchase of valuable watershed properties, protection of local water supplies and management of environmental corridors. These decisions have been made to provide a more independent, flexible and sustainable future.

The proactive steps taken by the District to protect and conserve our resources have been based on the concepts that: (1) resources are not limitless and therefore need to be conserved, nurtured and renewed; and (2) resources that are used to generate short-term gains result in an inefficient and inequitable consumption of resources that are not beneficial for a long-term strategy. Both of these concepts help to guide the District to make decisions that are conservative, careful and conscious of the role we currently play in a long-term strategy to protect the community.